Contents of the VIRQUIZ.DOC file

"The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead lined room with armed guards - and even then I have my doubts."

-- Eugene H. Spafford

Disclaimer: No responsibility can be claimed for your use of these texts and programs whatsoever. If something goes wrong, it was something YOU did!

Overview:

VirTest is a virus quiz program with two quizzes. The first is to see how much you know about viruses. The second is to test how much risk you are under in terms of getting a viral infection.

Included is a text file called VIRUS_MYTHS. It is a file about myths about computer viruses. I found it to be very accurate and complete and I believe it will be of great use to you. I suggest you take the quiz before reading it, so as to get a feel for what areas you need to patch up.

I included the source code with this package. Feel free to look through it, but remember that it is protected by copyright, and you may not distribute modified copies of it.

Things you can do to prepare, to save yourself grief later:

1. Make a clean write protected bootable floppy. You can make a floppy bootable by formatting with the /S command, or by running the dos program "SYS.COM" on a formatted disk.

2. Write down your hard-drive settings in CMOS.

3. Make backups of your boot sector and partition table. There are many anti-viral packages and utilities with which you can do this.

4. Try to obtain a decent virus detection program. There are many on the market, if you don't want to cough up buckets of cash, then I suggest McAfee's ViruScan, Frisk Software's F-Prot, or other shareware scanners. You can use them and get updates without paying an arm or a leg, if you are willing to go without the nice user friendly environments and repair features.

Things you should do if you get a virus attack:

1. TURN OFF THE COMPUTER! Memory Resident Viruses can survive warmboots, so power cuts are the only sure-fire way to get them out of memory. Also, why risk the chance that it will start systematically destroying files on your hard disk?

2. Boot from a clean write protected disk, or not at all. Continue to do so until you are sure the system is once again virus-free.

3. Use a scanner to try to find the virus.

4. Contact a computer user-group, or other computer-literate groups. They'll either have some suggestions as to what to do, or refer you to someone who can help. - OR - Use a software system that is designed to remove viruses.

Continue to boot from a clean write-protected floppy until you are certain there is no boot-infecting virus left on the system.

If it is a file infector that hit you, you must find out which programs are infected, and either delete or repair them. But whatever you do, DO NOT RUN THEM! Thus, it is suggested that you don't run anything on your hard drive until you have discovered the problem.

Final Notes:

Be sure to read "VIRUS_MY.THS", it has valuable information.

If you encounter any Virus or Trojan Horse programs, please send them to me. My address follows below. Be careful not to damage your data, or re-infect your system. Please put a label on the disk with the words "DANGEROUS PROGRAM" written in large letters.

Send it to:

Ed T. Toton III 7101 Talisman Lane Columbia, MD 21045

Or call my BBS, the Sorcerer's Quarters, at (410)-290-3752, and upload it. Make sure you put a description that indicates that it is a dangerous file.